Instituto Politécnico Nacional

About: Instituto Politécnico Nacional is a education organization based out in Mexico City, Mexico. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 43351 authors who have published 63315 publications receiving 938532 citations. The organization is also known as: Instituto Politécnico Nacional & Instituto Politecnico Nacional.

Scale-free foraging by primates emerges from their interaction with a complex environment.

Abstract: Scale-free foraging patterns are widespread among animals. These may be the outcome of an optimal searching strategy to find scarce, randomly distributed resources, but a less explored alternative is that this behaviour may result from the interaction of foraging animals with a particular distribution of resources. We introduce a simple foraging model where individual primates follow mental maps and choose their displacements according to a maximum efficiency criterion, in a spatially disordered environment containing many trees with a heterogeneous size distribution. We show that a particular tree-size frequency

Fermi large area telescope gamma-ray detection of the radio galaxy m87

Abstract: We report the Fermi-LAT discovery of high-energy (MeV/GeV) gamma-ray emission positionally consistent with the center of the radio galaxy M87, at a source significance of over 10 sigma in ten-months of all-sky survey data. Following the detections of Cen A and Per A, this makes M87 the third radio galaxy seen with the LAT. The faint point-like gamma-ray source has a >100 MeV flux of 2.45 (+/- 0.63) x 10^-8 ph cm^-2 s^-1 (photon index = 2.26 +/- 0.13) with no significant variability detected within the LAT observation. This flux is comparable with the previous EGRET upper limit (< 2.18 x 10^-8 ph cm^-2 s^-1, 2 sigma), thus there is no evidence for a significant MeV/GeV flare on decade timescales. Contemporaneous Chandra and VLBA data indicate low activity in the unresolved X-ray and radio core relative to previous observations, suggesting M87 is in a quiescent overall level over the first year of Fermi-LAT observations. The LAT gamma-ray spectrum is modeled as synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) emission from the electron population producing the radio-to-X-ray emission in the core. The resultant SSC spectrum extrapolates smoothly from the LAT band to the historical-minimum TeV emission. Alternative models for the core and possible contributions from the kiloparsec-scale jet in M87 are considered, and can not be excluded.

Metabolic requirements for neutrophil extracellular traps formation

Abstract: As part of the innate immune response, neutrophils are at the forefront of defence against infection, resolution of inflammation and wound healing. They are the most abundant leucocytes in the peripheral blood, have a short lifespan and an estimated turnover of 1010 to 1011 cells per day. Neutrophils efficiently clear microbial infections by phagocytosis and by oxygen-dependent and oxygen-independent mechanisms. In 2004, a new neutrophil anti-microbial mechanism was described, the release of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) composed of DNA, histones and anti-microbial peptides. Several microorganisms, bacterial products, as well as pharmacological stimuli such as PMA, were shown to induce NETs. Neutrophils contain relatively few mitochondria, and derive most of their energy from glycolysis. In this scenario we aimed to analyse some of the metabolic requirements for NET formation. Here it is shown that NETs formation is strictly dependent on glucose and to a lesser extent on glutamine, that Glut-1, glucose uptake, and glycolysis rate increase upon PMA stimulation, and that NET formation is inhibited by the glycolysis inhibitor, 2-deoxy-glucose, and to a lesser extent by the ATP synthase inhibitor oligomycin. Moreover, when neutrophils were exposed to PMA in glucose-free medium for 3 hr, they lost their characteristic polymorphic nuclei but did not release NETs. However, if glucose (but not pyruvate) was added at this time, NET release took place within minutes, suggesting that NET formation could be metabolically divided into two phases; the first, independent from exogenous glucose (chromatin decondensation) and, the second (NET release), strictly dependent on exogenous glucose and glycolysis.

Optical communication with two-photon coherent states--Part II: Photoemissive detection and structured receiver performance

Abstract: In Part I of this three-part study, it was shown that novel quantum states, called two-photon coherent states (TCS), have significant potential for improving free-space optical communications. Because TCS radiation does not possess a classical analog, i.e., its diagonal P -representation is highly singular, the semiclassical conditional Poisson process model for direct detection is not applicable to TCS reception. In this paper, photoemissive detection of arbitrary quantized radiation fields is studied with incorporation of the nontrivial effects of detector quantum efficiency. General theorems are derived permitting the application of classical point process results to the detection and estimation of signals in arbitrary quantum states. These general theorems are applied to determining the performance of TCS optical communication systems that employ direct, heterodyne, or homodyne detection in binary decision as well as in linear modulation problems. It is shown that the use of TCS radiation with direct detection or heterodyne detection results in minimal performance increments over comparable coherent-state systems. Homodyne detection, however, can achieve the full TCS signal-to-noise ratio improvement predicted in Part I of this study. The increase in homodyne signal-to-noise ratio obtained by use of TCS radiation yields significant performance gains in both linear modulation and antipodal signal detection.